1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a method and an apparatus for requesting that an image be printed, where the image is in a mobile device, such as a cellular phone, which is able to capture the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 illustrates photographs having a panoramic format, which are formed using consecutive images, according to conventional methods. As shown in FIG. 1, a first conventional method of forming consecutive images is one of the simplest methods available and comprises obtaining a panoramic photograph by printing consecutive images and positioning the printouts together in their proper order (as shown in a printout 1A). However, in practice, this method is inconvenient since joint portions of the photographed images must be positioned correctly. Further, a partial mismatch of the obtained panoramic photograph may occur according to a joint status of the photographed images.
A second conventional method of forming consecutive images comprises uniting several images to a single image before printing, as shown in image 1B of FIG. 1. FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a conventional panoramic image printing apparatus which realizes the second conventional method shown in FIG. 1B. As shown in FIG. 2, the conventional panoramic image printing apparatus includes an image viewer 21, an image adjuster 22, an image uniting unit 23, an image clipper 24, and a panoramic image printing unit 25.
The image viewer 21 displays source images of a panoramic image. The image adjuster 22 moves the source images in horizontal/vertical directions and performs zooming operations for the source images to generate a panoramic image. The image uniting unit 23 creates a single united image using the source images adjusted by the image adjuster 22. The image clipper 24 creates a panoramic image having a user desired size by clipping the image united by the image uniting unit 23. The panoramic image printing unit 25 prints the panoramic image clipped by the image clipper 24.
Although a relatively correct joint may be performed when the source images are united in the second conventional method shown in FIG. 1B as compared to the first conventional method shown in FIG. 1A, the second method shown in FIG. 1B has a problem in that a partial mismatch of a panoramic image may occur and an image modification process, such as clipping of images to a specific size, must be performed to unite the images. In particular, the second method shown in FIG. 1B requires a memory resource that is double the total image file size to perform the image modification process. Thus, a panoramic image cannot be easily created using a mobile device having an insufficient memory resource and low specification hardware.